


Rest Your Weary Heart

by Star_Going_Supernova



Category: Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Post-Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019), wasn’t expecting the marshmallows to become metaphors but here we are, what's this? me giving Mark a break? impossible.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28121985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: It's been weeks since Boston, and Mark finally, at long last, takes a break. It's not as easy as it sounds. Lucky for him, he's not alone.
Relationships: Madison Russell & Mark Russell
Comments: 15
Kudos: 27





	Rest Your Weary Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey, it's Wednesday.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

It felt like it’d been a long time since he’d last seen this place. His cabin in Colorado was the same as he’d left it, only three short weeks ago. Not even a full month. And yet, it may as well have been a lifetime after everything that happened.

Emma was dead. Titans were freely roaming the world. So many cities had taken damage, though none worse than Boston, rendered to nothing but a stretch of dust and debris after Godzilla’s meltdown. The death count was high, and still rising as people who’d been critically injured during the rampages continued to slip away.

Mark was tired. Those few days chasing after Emma, trying to get Maddie back, had been exhausting on their own. The aftermath was made even worse by how awful his sleep had been, tormented by nightmares of being too late. Of having to bury his daughter alongside his son.

He’d have liked to say it was all behind him, but sometimes he still woke up in a panic, desperate to check that Maddie was alive and in the room next door or just across the hall. If Maddie had similar nightmares, she’d yet to share them with him. She seemed well enough, but, now that they were past the adrenaline and panic and all, they were slowly getting used to being in each other’s space after years of only sporadic emails.

It was funny, Mark thought sometimes. This sort of stuff never made it into movies or books or even the news. What happens to the heroes who make it back from war? They have to keep living.

Ilene, and then Ling, had frequently encouraged him to get away for a bit, take a breather and some time to think about what he wanted to do going forward. They could use him, at Monarch, and of course he’d be welcomed.

He got them off his back by insisting he wanted to at least stick around for the funerals. Not only his ex-wife’s, but Serizawa and Graham’s too. And once those were over, and even _Rick_ was nagging at him to ditch the reports and legal talk and plans for the organization, he’d made the claim that he didn’t want to drag Maddie away from the only life she’d known for the past five years before she was ready.

The truth, which he denied even to himself sometimes, was that the silence outside of meetings and control rooms and labs weighed heavily on him. He feared the isolated wilderness would drive him mad.

It was only when Maddie, who’d heard his last excuse, stopped him with a challenging gleam in her eyes and said, “I think we deserve a vacation,” that he gave in.

So, they’d gone to his cabin in Colorado.

The two of them had made a a three-part promise on the flight over. One, they would have breakfast and dinner together every day, unless they had a really, _really_ good reason not to. Two, there would be no Monarch work whatsoever. And three, no talking about Titans or Titan-adjacent topics.

A nice, relaxing vacation for a little while in the place he’d called home for half a decade. He could do that.

Mark really believed it, too. After airing the place out, going out to pick up plenty of food for their stay, and settling back into his own bedroom, he’d felt pretty good. He didn’t even have any nightmares that first night, too tired from the excitement and the change in time zone.

He was jittery by the next afternoon.

Maddie was out… somewhere. She’d had a book and a blanket with her when she left, so it might be a while until she made a reappearance. Mark paced around the kitchen, behind the couch, out onto the porch, and back, over and over, to keep himself from getting on the phone with someone in Monarch. He had no idea how long he went on like that, just that at one point, he turned around to see Maddie standing in the open front door, watching him.

“You’re muttering to yourself,” she said after he froze. “Dad, you realize the point of a vacation is to relax and _not_ stress yourself into an early grave?”

He half-heartedly waved her concern away.

She frowned. “Were you like this before?”

“Like what?”

“Pacing tracks into the floor.” She cautiously approached. “You haven’t come to check on me the past few nights. I thought your nightmares were getting better.”

Mark winced. “You knew about that?”

Laughing, Maddie shrugged. “I’m not sure you realize how loud you were when you did it. Sometimes I was awake anyway, but I’d come around if I wasn’t.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. If I’d minded, I’d have asked you to stop. Why can’t you relax? I don’t remember you being a total workaholic or anything.”

“I’m not.” He edged around the couch and took a seat at one end. Maddie vaulted over the back to bounce into place at the other, facing him, and remained pointedly silent. He thought for a moment. “It’s—I’m just worried.”

Maddie only wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin between her raised knees.

Sighing, Mark forced himself to continue, knowing there was no way he’d be let off the hook on this one. “It’s not that I think something will happen that we’re needed for. But there are Titans, just out there, walking around. It’s like if dinosaurs were suddenly part of everyday life, and you had to worry about coming across a T-rex while while going for a walk.”

He tapped absently at his knee, staring off into space. Reality terrified him. As small as the odds were for such a thing, there was a non-zero chance that he could just look out the window one day and see a Titan strolling through the woods.

“I don’t hate them like I used to,” he admitted. “But they… I fear them.”

It wasn’t unreasonable, he knew. He had cause enough, even though he would never be asked to justify his fear. Plenty of people were scared of them.

But it wasn’t as simple as apprehension or nerves. It was paranoia.

Neither Godzilla nor the MUTOs had actually dealt the fatal blow that killed Andrew, but it was because of them that he was dead. Ghidorah had been literal feet away from killing Mark himself in Antarctica, and in Boston, he’d nearly zapped Maddie out of existence. That battle—involving _four_ Titans this time—miraculously hadn’t resulted it Maddie’s death. But Ghidorah had succeeded with Emma where he’d failed with Mark and Maddie.

It wasn’t paranoia if they were really out to get you, and as far as Mark cared, they were out to get his family. It seemed destined that the Russells were meant to be wiped out by Titan-kind, and there had already been too many close calls with the remaining members of his family.

As morbid of a thought as it was, two dead by Titan didn’t sound like much, but when two was half, a solid 50%, and given their existing track record…

The odds didn’t feel good.

And while Mark had no desire to control or command the Titans like Emma had, he could at least stay constantly aware and up-to-date of where each and every one was at any given moment. It was like they said: finding a spider wasn’t that bad, it was losing it that incited panic.

Paranoia, he’d come to understand, was _exhausting._

But was he willing to tell all that to his daughter?

When he didn’t continue after his admission of fear, she stretched out a leg and poked him with her toes. “People don’t usually want to be involved with things that scare them.” It sounded a bit like an accusation, like she was calling him out, like she had glimpsed his thoughts through his eyes and knew that it wasn’t just a matter of fear.

A compromise. “I figured I’d rather know where they are then find out the hard way that they’re nearby.”

“Keep your enemies close?”

He chuckled. “Something like that.”

Something in Maddie’s expression, or body language, maybe, said she didn’t fully believe him, even as she nodded. Popping up off the couch, she said, “Well, I doubt any of them are going to show up in Colorado any time soon. So stop giving yourself more gray hair and come help me set up the hammock.”

“What hammock?” he asked, standing and following her to the door. “Wait— _more_ gray hair?”

Laughing, his incredibly rude child ran ahead of him to the tree line, where a large rope hammock was spread out on the ground beside the unbuilt metal frame. It was near the bonfire pit, and Mark had a pretty good idea of how they’d be spending their evening. A pair of metal marshmallow roasting sticks were leaned up against the brick.

It didn’t take too long to get the whole thing set up, but right after, Maddie insisted on making peanut butter pinecones for the birds. They dug out the ladder to hang them well off the ground where it would be easy to watch them from the hammock. As soon as they were finished with that, Maddie asked if he’d bothered to see if the wolves he’d been photographing were still around. So they went to check for signs, which turned into a pleasant walk along old trails both he and animals had made over the years.

Before Mark knew it, the rest of the afternoon had passed, dinner had been eaten, the kitchen cleaned up, and they were getting ready to make s’mores. And he hadn’t even thought about the Titans again, not once. The itch to check his phone was gone.

“How did you do that?” he asked Maddie as she wiggled some graham crackers out of their packaging. She sent him a confused look. Context, he realized, might help.

A sly smile broke through her brief bewilderment before he could offer any. “Oh, you mean how did I make you forget your phone even existed for like, five hours?”

Mark rolled his eyes.

“Duh. Simple distractions. If you were too busy thinking about birds and wolves and stuff, there’d be no room for Titans.” She offered a cracker to him. “The thing about relaxing and seeking peace and quiet—it just makes more room for all the bad thoughts. You had it right at the base. You kept busy.”

“Then why were you so insistent that I take a vacation if what I was doing was working just fine?”

“Was it working?” she asked, and she actually sounded curious. “Because it didn’t look like it from where I was standing.”

Admittedly, he hadn’t felt very well since Boston. Even setting aside the nightmares. Always aching or tired, frequent headaches, little sleep—and what he got was often restless anyway—twitchiness when the quiet lasted too long…

“Maybe not,” he muttered.

Maddie juggled a pair of marshmallows back and forth. “It’s like—okay. Say you break your leg. You get a cast and some pain meds, right? But even with the cast and medication, you don’t start walking around the day after you get home from the hospital. You have to rest first, too.” She stabbed the marshmallows onto the prongs of her stick. “Staying busy was your cast, Dad. Just because you’ve taken the first step to healing up doesn’t mean your leg magically isn’t broken anymore.”

He stared at her as she turned her attention to the fire. Distantly, he realized his own marshmallow had just caught on fire. There was a parallel to his current thought process, somewhere.

Finally, he snapped out of it. “Where did you learn that?” Maybe he sounded unfairly surprised, but, hey, this was not how he’d expected this conversation to go _at all_.

“Therapy.”

The marshmallow sagged off his stick, entirely up in flames now. It was just barely managing to cling on. “When did you have therapy?”

“Right now,” she answered, pulling her roasting stick out of the bonfire. Her marshmallows were golden and just the right amount of gooey. “I mean, like, I’m currently in therapy at the base, not—not _right now_ , right now.”

 _Why?_ seemed extremely rude to ask, and _how?_ didn’t sound much better.

Luckily, his daughter added before he could introduce his foot to his mouth, “I asked around the day after Boston. I wasn’t gonna deal with all that without some professional help.”

“Smart,” Mark said faintly. “I didn’t even think…”

She grinned. “See? I’m not impulsive and reckless _all_ the time.” Following the trail of smoke up to the sky, Maddie silently examined the slowly growing number of visible stars. Without looking away, she said, “Also, I hope you know that once we’re done with s’mores, we’re using the hammock until one or both of us is too tired to keep their eyes open.”

“You’re the boss,” Mark promised, not even a little jokingly.

Her smile turned very pleased at that. Mark’s marshmallow finally gave up and plopped pitifully into the pit. Maddie passed him one of her picture-worthy s’mores.

By the time they’d made themselves comfortable in the hammock, it was completely dark, only the fire and lights of the cabin lighting their little part of the forest. It really hit him, then, with Maddie tucked into his side, that she was alive and well, that he himself was alive and well, and that the worst, _hopefully,_ was behind them.

He sighed, long and slow, and let his eyes drift closed. The hypnotic swinging of the hammock lulled him closer to sleep, but for the moment, he resisted. He wanted to enjoy the pure relief a little longer.

“Y’know what’s cool?” Maddie asked suddenly.

Mark hummed questioningly.

“You and I have both stared into the eyes of Titans. Mothra for me, and Godzilla for you.”

“Huh.” He pictured the scene in his head, on top of the submarine. The rain, the waves, the crackle of atomic breath in the air. Godzilla, huffing through his nose, eyes narrowed, as he stepped closer and leaned down.

The way he’d felt like prey under that burning gaze. At the time, he’d wondered whether it was a warning, or perhaps a silent reminder of what he was. But later, so much later, he’d seen how Godzilla had arrived at the coast, stormed up the beach, and didn’t at all seem to mind the veritable army surrounding him, following him into battle.

“Stared into Ghidorah’s too,” Maddie mumbled. “And it was so different.”

Dragging his eyes open, he stared into the blackness above them, the trees blocking the stars from view. Here and there, though, he could spot a tiny twinkle of light. “I hope I’m never close enough to a Titan to do that again.”

“Mm. Can’t relate.”

Mark snorted. “Enough talk about Titans. How about we go out on the lake tomorrow? We can try fishing, if you don’t jump in and scare them all away.” He felt her cheek shift, and knew she must be smiling.

“I would _never_.”

“Sure, kid. I’ll believe it when I see it.” He groaned. “We should probably get up and head inside.”

Maddie thunked her forehead against the side of his chest. “No. Five more minutes.”

“We’ll fall asleep—”

“Oh well.”

Giving in—but not without tickling at his daughter’s side, eliciting a yelp—he relaxed again.

Five minutes _definitely_ passed, but he was too comfortable, too warm inside and out, too happy to care. At first, he thought Maddie had fallen asleep, but then she squirmed slightly.

She cleared her throat. “Is this a good time to mention that my therapist is expecting you to start having sessions with her once we get back?”

Laughter bubbled up inside Mark’s chest. He never would have guessed that this vacation would turn out to be exactly what he needed. But for the first time in almost a month, his heart didn’t feel quite so heavy.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, if twelve-year-old Maddie was making breakfast for her mom while Emma was having tragic flashbacks in her dark bedroom, then twelve-year-old, I’ll-save-the-world-myself-thank-you-very-much Maddie is going to strong-arm Mark into therapy. She’s extra-done waiting for adults to get their act together, so she’s fixing her own problems—and some of his while she’s at it—from now on.
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


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